


Independent Study

by XaviaAndromedovna



Series: Student-Guided Instruction [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: (more or less), Angst, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Homage, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Abed, Pre-Slash, Presumed Dead, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25798153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: Troy's not the only one who needs to figure out who he is on his own.
Relationships: Abed Nadir/Rachel (Community), Annie Edison & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: Student-Guided Instruction [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870984
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	1. Unit 1: Rebounding

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to "Practicum: Circumnavigation", I currently plan on updating them simultaneously (but by no means regularly hahahahaaaaaa...) I'm in desperate need of a beta so hit me up if you're interested!

Abed is fyne. Abed is fyne. ~~Abed is fine.~~

Abed spends the next seven days thinking about anything and everything. He thinks about the weird dent in the refrigerator. He thinks about InspectiCon 2015. He thinks about the newest season of _Bloodlines of Conquest_. He even thinks about schoolwork sometimes. He doesn’t think about the empty former-Dreamatorium, because he has no reason to. As a clone of the original Abed, the absence of its former occupant is a fact as neutral as the apartment’s walls. Which they should repaint. Do the terms of their lease allow them to repaint?

Things have been quiet with just him and Annie. It helps when he’s editing, but it’s the kind of silence that makes the audience uneasy because it’s so different from the vibrant music before. It’s the kind of silence that isn’t an absence of sound but a present, tangible muting of everything else. It’s the kind of silence that sits there even with the TV on and music playing from Annie’s room, the kind you can’t drown out just by being louder. It’s the kind you’d have to drown another way, but he’s watched Jeff and Shirley long enough to know that won’t actually help him.

Britta’s being annoying because Abed ruined a show for her, which is valid. But she’ll have to try much harder to out-spoiler him. If anything, this gives him a chance to practice his ASL, now that he has a new friend, Carol. She’s great—she’s no replacement for Troy but—

But he doesn’t need a replacement. Because nothing’s missing.

It ends up not mattering, because at one of the many school dances whose themes he can no longer follow, Britta finally gets her revenge, through Carol. It’s diabolical, really; weirdly he’s proud of her. Or at least, he will be when the sting of betrayal and lost hope fade. He actually really liked her. But perhaps Carol was a red herring to throw the audience off while They set up the real love interest: Coat Check Girl—Rachel—who is once again checking coats.

Rachel has a subtle but enjoyable sense of humor. Rachel likes _Rick and Morty_. Rachel doesn’t treat him like he’s weird. Rachel came into his life in accordance with several well-worn tropes that Abed knows how to deal with. She’s the perfect love interest for clone!Abed.

He tries not to read too much into the fact that he starts dating Rachel immediately after things end between him and Carol. He tries even harder not to think about how quickly he _started_ things with either of them. If anything, him-and-Rachel fulfills a long narrative arc that he quite frankly forgot about but is glad to resume. Maybe they’ll be good for each other.

~~~

_“Is everything alright, Ensign Nadir?”_

_Abed looks over at Data. They’re at the navigation panel aboard the_ Enterprise _. Cool. Data has a panel open and Abed looks in his hand to find a tool he doesn’t recognize but that he knows Data is waiting for. “Yes, sorry.” He hands it to Data. “How long until we can get underway?”_

_“It’s hard to say, we’ll need La Forge to weigh in to be certain, but I estimate at least 7 months.” Months. A deep sense of foreboding settles in Abed’s chest. He accepts the tool back from Data absently, barely registering the whooshing of the automatic doors. “Ah,” Data remarks. “I see you too have a new protégé.” Abed turns around and sees double. No, quadruple. He sees Geordi La Forge and Ensign Barnes. He sees LeVar and Troy. He sees a yellow shirt next to red._

_“No. Please no.” Troy—Ensign Barnes—smiles at him sadly as La Forge makes the introductions. Abed stands there numb, a vague mumbling in his ears as Ensign Barnes extends his pinky, index finger, and thumb. “I love you.” He hears Troy say the words too but his lips don’t move. Before Abed can react, La Forge and Barnes are walking back through the doors, beyond which is nothing but darkness. He tries to scream, but he never could scream in dreams. He tries anyway. The vacuum of space rushes through the open door, sucking the two into its merciless embrace. As the oxygen escapes with them, Abed holds onto the nearest piece of bolted-down equipment and tries to breathe._

He gasps awake. It’s not often he gets nightmares, but they’ve been happening more frequently ever since… ever since Troy left. That’s the trouble with having all of original!Abed’s memories and thoughts still there in his brain: even though they can’t hurt him when he’s awake, dreams are another matter entirely. He tries to sleep as little as possible.

He exits the fort for a glass of water and sees Annie hunched over the table, still compiling their giant list of things needed to save Greendale. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Annie groans. “What time is it?”

“2:37am,” he reads from the microwave. “I’d say you should get some sleep, but I’m starting to think it’s overrated.”

She looks up at him sympathetically while closing her binder. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” he intones. “Just the Unsubtle Thematic Nightmare trope. I personally think it’s cliché, but it does allow for some imaginative cinematography and economic storytelling. Hard to sleep through though.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I…” she trails off, then smiles abruptly. “So I see you and Rachel are back together, that’s exciting!”

“Yeah, she’s great, I’m glad I was able to find her again.”

“I’m really happy for you, she seems lovely.” He expects her to say more but she must decide against it because she just picks up her binder and says, “good night, Abed, hope you have some better dreams.”

“Good night,” he replies as her door shuts. The last thing he wants to do is go back to sleep, and the melancholy of the kitchen light being the only one on in the otherwise dark apartment begs for an indie film scenario. He settles back into his armchair, next to where a few hours before Rachel sat like she belonged there. What hurt the most was that it didn’t hurt, that he didn’t even realize whose place she’d taken until he looked over expecting the wrong face. That it felt right for the person he’s with to sit there. He’s already moving on—he’s heard that’s a good thing. It’s what he needs, ~~even if it’s not what he wants~~.

He sits there in the dark for a minute or two before turning on the TV. He scrolls absently through the channels with the volume low, not wanting to disturb Annie. The trope crashes into him at 100 miles an hour and too late he wishes for any scenario but this but he scrolls past a news channel and sees a brief flash of a name before it finally registers with him two channels later. ‘Levar.’ He goes back to the news and apologizes in his head to Annie who is about to wake up to the mother of all meltdowns.


	2. Unit 2: Trauma

He sees it crawl by on the ticker tape like it’s just a stock update and not the end of Abed’s world. “Levar Burton and non-celebrity companion captured by pirates in the Gulf of Mexico.” The high-pitched whine forces its way unbidden out of his lungs but he feels it more than hears it because all he hears is the newscasters talking about anything but the fate of Troy.

The light in Annie’s room goes on and she tears out of it in a flurry. “Abed what the Hell?!” He turns around, having evidently stood up sharply at one point. His face must be doing something meaningful because her expression changes the moment she lays eyes on him. The continued screaming probably doesn’t help. He turns back to the TV, hoping she understands what she needs to do. “Abed? What’s wrong?” She comes up next to him and follows his gaze to the TV, at which point she lets out a gasp. “Oh my God.”

Annie throws her arms around him and he grips one gratefully. They hold each other until his screams die down and only Annie’s sobs remain. When parts of his brain finally come back online, he pulls up the tracking app and sees that Troy, or at least his body, is somewhere between Mexico and Cuba. He shows the dot to Annie wordlessly, knowing she’ll understand the significance. He doubts she’ll complain about the trackers now; he told them all this day would come. He calls Troy’s phone but it goes straight to voicemail, and he should have expected that because the chances of Troy still having his phone are actually pretty slim. He messages him on every system he knows. Annie begins to send a frantic group text in the chat. “Wait,” he instructs her, softly. “Don’t wake them up yet. There’s nothing they can do right now but wait anyway.”

“Abed, they need to know!”

“No they don’t,” he snaps. “They get to live in a world where Troy’s still alive and if you’ve taught me anything about empathy it’s that we should consider the fact that maybe they want to keep living in that world.”

Thankfully Annie puts down her phone but she grabs his shoulders. “Abed, look at me.” He looks at her eyes for a second before darting his attention away. She doesn’t seem to expect more eye contact than that, just an acknowledgement that he’s listening. “You’re right; telling them now would worry them for no reason. Because Troy is still alive. He has to be. It says they’re captured, not that they’re dead. We don’t know anything yet.”

They don’t know anything yet, and that makes it worse. All they can do is wait. “I need to be alone,” he mutters. “Sorry for waking you.” He numbly walks into Troy’s room, shuts the door, and lays on Troy’s old bed, because that’s what people do in movies when a loved one dies, right? Try to be as close to them as possible? He watches Troy’s red dot blink surrounded by a sea of blue until his eyes can no longer stay awake.

_As he emerges from below deck, the noon sun blinds him and brings with it the heat of the tropics. Abed squints before adjusting to the light and the sway of the boat. A familiar voice calls to him. “Mr. Nadir, how good of you to join us!”_

_Abed turns to see Annie dressed as pirate king Elizabeth Swann at the wheel. He makes his way to her position as she calls out directions to the rest of the crew. “Hey Annie. Are we close?”_

_“That’s Captain Edison to you,” she quips with stern amusement, “but yes. Do you see that smoke on the horizon?”_

_He looks, and suddenly the ship is just off the coast of a deserted island, where a pile of wood and rum is burning. Next to it he can see Troy waving at them frantically. “Drop anchor!” Annie calls. Impatient to see him, Abed jumps into the warm water and swims to the beach. He takes Troy in his arms and spins him around._

_“You had me worried, Mr. Barnes.”_

_Troy laughs. “Abed, how many times must I ask you to call me Troy?”_

_“At least once more, Mr. Barnes,” he whispers in Troy’s ear, “as always.”_

_For a second it seems like Troy is about to kiss him, but as Abed pulls back to look at him he realizes the sky is dark. In the light of the moon, he can see Troy, or rather his skeleton. Abed springs away from the talking corpse. “Please, Abed,” Troy begs, reaching out to him. “Help me. Break the curse. I need you. Abed, please. Abed!”_

Abed wakes up with a start and immediately checks his phone. The dot has not moved.

~~~

The wait for a response is the most stressful 72 hours of his life. He’s taken to sleeping in Troy’s bed every night; it doesn’t get rid of the nightmares, but he’s not as tired when they wake him up. Troy’s dot has been slowly moving west the past three days. Abed doesn’t leave the apartment the day the dot reaches shore, just in case. A flicker of hope begins to awaken when the dot starts crossing the Gulf of Mexico at a much faster speed than Troy’s boat can possibly accomplish. Is he flying? ~~Is his body being repatriated?~~

Forty minutes after the dot stops moving somewhere in Miami, he gets a phone call from an unknown Florida number. He stabs the green button so fast and hard it stubs his thumb. “Troy, please tell me it’s you.”

“I’m alive, Abed,” Troy exhales, and Abed flops into his chair in relief. “I just landed in Miami, I have to meet with the lawyers, I assume you know the gist.”

“It was international news,” Abed confirms. He chuckles, partially because that’s how this type of convo goes in thrillers and partially because the sheer joy of hearing Troy’s voice is overwhelming. “Gotta say, didn’t expect pirates.”

“Neither did I, but it was honestly a big misunderstanding. I don’t have time to explain it right now, but I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“Thank you.”

“Also, you were right to make me memorize your number; you and my parents are the only ones I remember, and my phone’s at the bottom of the Gulf.”

Abed laughs again. “I’ll email you all the group’s numbers.”

“Thanks, also can you let them know?”

“Of course.” There’s an awkward lull, where Abed just listens to Troy breathing, proof he’s still among the living. “I thought you were gone.”

“I know, sorry to make you worry.”

“Just be careful, please. I really don’t think the group can handle this again.”

“I’ll try.” The line rustles and a voice can be heard near Troy. “Shit, I gotta go, but I gotta say this, because I don’t say it enough. I love you, man.”

Clone!Abed, or whatever rom-com heroine has overtaken him, manages a reply. “I love you too, Troy. I miss you so much.”

“Miss you too,” Troy says softly, and Abed can hear the smile in his voice. “I’ll call once we figure this out.”

The line goes dead and Abed pulls up the group chat. _Troy’s alive._ Exhausted, he lies down in Troy’s bed one more time and falls asleep.


End file.
